


Tiny

by steeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeb



Series: Tiny [2]
Category: Marvel Ultimates
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-30
Updated: 2012-01-30
Packaged: 2017-10-30 08:19:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/329720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/steeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeb/pseuds/steeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint meets his newborn son for the first time.  And he was just so tiny..</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tiny

**Author's Note:**

> Set roughly seven or eight years before the events of Ultimates 1.

He was just so tiny.

Little Callum Barton, five pounds, seventeen inches long, born at 3:24 in the morning. Everything about him was small; his fingers, his toes, his eyes, his lungs. But the machines were so much bigger than Clint expected to keep such a small person alive. The tiny mask attached to his nose that a tiny tube forced tiny amounts of oxygen through snaked to an impossibly large machine full of buttons and numbers.

Clint sat in the rocking chair for hours just watching his son, watching the baby's little chest rise and fall, afraid that if he took his eyes off his son for more than a second he would look back and the baby would be gone.  _Just breathe, Callum,_ he would think.  _That's all you have to do, just inhale and exhale.  Daddy can take care of the rest, baby, daddy is here..._

He did not breathe right away.  As soon as he was born the doctors gave him to Laura, then took him away just as quickly when she noticed he was not breathing.  Everything happened too quickly for Clint to comprehend.  The doctors suctioned out his mouth, then his nose, then his mouth again.  As much gurgling as the suction ball made, his skin continued to lose its color.  Clint was a circus boy; the most he knew about babies was that they were supposed to be pink.  Pink was good, blue and chalky was bad. 

His SHIELD training only prepared him for rescuscitating adults, not newborns, but he recognized the self-inflating bag the doctor used to pump air down the baby's trachea.  Another doctor used two fingers, _just two fingers,_ to tap on his chest and keep his little heart going.

As he watched them work on his son, he remembered almost every instance involving Callum up to that point including the very night he was conceived.  SHIELD seldom stationed units across the globe, but when Fury delivered the news that Clint would be stationed somewhere for an indeterminate amount of time he spent his last night with Laura.  They had a fairly frequent sex life, but that night they defined love.  He focused on her every want and need, every sharp breath, every moan.  Clint wanted to memorize every curve of her body before he left, every soft spot.  He removed her clothing slowly, letting his hands do their own work.  She reacted to his touch, arching her back and digging her nails into his biceps.  He kissed her slowly, barely opening his lips against her neck, burying his body into hers.  When he leaned up to remove his pajamas Laura looked up at him and smiled, peeling his glasses from his nose.  With his entire body free he lowered himself again, entering her slowly.

She was warm, warm and safe and beautiful and everything good in the world.  Laura was his beginning in the morning, and his end at night.  And as her legs wrapped around his to will him forward, he realized that she was his One.  His One and Only.  Clint wanted to tell Laura everything, all of his fears and all of his hopes.  Every tiny gasp that escaped from her lips made his ears perk at the sound, and every grunt he made got lost in her neck.

They picked up speed, their rocking motion becoming synchronized until that familiar warmth bubbled between his hips.  Laura came first, tensing her entire body and hugging his neck as if she wanted to completely absorb him.  Moments later Clint shuddered at his own release, his mind going blank and relaxing as if injected with a drug.  The rest of the night they stayed entwined in each other's arms, letting go long enough to roll over or fix the heavy blankets.

The next morning, he was gone. 

Laura knew the risks, she knew why Clint had to leave.  It did not hurt any less, though.  She hated every phone call he made to her, knowing full well that when they said goodbye it would possibly be the last time they spoke.  But then, after two months, _she_ called _him._

 _"_ Clint?"

"Laura?  Honey, I can't talk right now.  What's the matter?" 

She breathed deeply into the phone, unsure how he would react.  "Clint," she choked, trying to fight back tears.  "I'm pregnant."  And then there was silence on his end.  Pulling her feet together so she could wrap her arms around her knees, she allowed the tears to trickle down her face until he spoke again.

"... _I'm a dad?"_   Clint's entire tone changed.  His entire outlook on life changed.  At home he had a wife, and soon he would have a baby.  He spent the next five minutes of the phone call running around the barracks telling every person with whom he came into contact.  Fury could find out later, but at that moment Clint could not contain himself.

He returned home from the mission a month later, long after Laura wore his shirts to cover her protruding belly.  For the first day or two Clint was almost afraid to touch her, scared that he would hurt her or the baby in some way.  But then one night as he lay with his arm stretched across her, he felt the baby kick for the first time.  _Strong_ , the only word that came to mind.  In that moment Clint decided that he would teach his child everything he knew about bows, arrows, discipline, and love.  Everything.  Most of all, Clint would teach the baby that his daddy loved him.  Or her.

And so this routine continued for weeks; Clint would not sleep until he felt the baby shift or kick, and Laura would just sleep all the time.  They figured out how to move at night, how to make love, how to lay together to take pressure off her back.  And they were seven months in when her water broke.

Clint knew it was too early, as much as Laura tried to reassure him that she felt fine.  The winces she tried to hide from him only made him more nervous, and when she dropped a bowl to clutch at her belly he scooped her up and carried her to the car. 

That was ten hours ago.  And now he sat in the rocking chair, looking through the warm plexiglass at his son hooked up to so many wires and tubes Clint lost track.  He rocked in synch with the monotonous beep of a machine, interrupted only when a nurse or a doctor stopped to write on charts and graphs.  Laura slept in a different room to regain some of her strength, and Clint would go to her when a nurse told him she was awake.  But for now he stayed in the chair and rocked, watching the baby's chest rise and fall.  He wanted to hold his little boy, to cuddle him, to tell him that everything was fine, but they were separated by glass. 

After a few hours with no change, a doctor asked Clint if he was a religious man.  Clint never believed in a god that would take away so many people from him, and threatened to take away another.  He asked if Clint wanted to baptize Callum, and Clint did not know how to answer.  Callum did not belong to God; Callum belonged to his mommy and daddy, and Clint would do everything in his power to make sure he stayed that way.

As dawn approached, still unchanged, a nurse placed a hand on his shoulder.  Through puffy red eyes, exhaustion clouding his brain, he watched her pull over a stool to meet his eye level.

"Your wife requested that we remove the tubes," she spoke, slowly to make sure Clint understood.  "Do you want to hold him after we do?  He will not suffer; actually this could make everything easier.  For everyone."

What did that mean?  Those words did not make any sense to him.  The tubes were all there to help him, right?  Why would they need to take them away?  Callum was still there, his tiny chest still bobbed up and down.  He was still fighting. 

Without saying a word, Clint nodded.  He continued rocking in the chair as the nurses flipped off machines, then removed the tape and gauze covering his little body.  For a fraction of a second, Callum's face looked panicked then became peaceful.  The nurse left a single wire attached to the baby's chest to monitor the last of his heartbeat, but turned off the sound. 

A second nurse placed a blanket across Clint's chest, his dazed mind unable to focus on everything happening at once.  People moved around him and signed paperwork, machines were turned off and shoved away, and Clint continued to rock.

And suddenly, there was Callum.

He was so tiny, everything about him was tiny.  His tiny toes, his tiny fingers, his tiny lungs.  They placed him in the crook of Clint's neck, his tiny head tucked under Clint's jaw.  Callum had more hair than Clint thought, so blonde and light as if it was the fuzz from a peach.  Clint could hardly breathe; this was his baby boy, the little person he talked to for months through his mommy's belly.  This was the little baby he swore to love and tell him every day that his daddy loved him.

"Daddy's here," he whispered against Callum's head.  "Daddy's right here."

And so he rocked once again, patting Callum's back through the tiny fleece blanket.  As he rocked, Callum stretched out his tiny fingers then balled his tiny fist against Clint's chest as if he were a tiny monkey, causing Clint to stop.  He could feel Callum's tiny breath against his neck, steady and strong.  And when Clint focused even more, he felt Callum's tiny heart beat against his own, relatively fast but steady nonetheless.  The nurse, confused as ever, placed a drum against Callum's back for a moment and listened to his tiny lungs draw in air and force it back out again, all on his own.

She flipped on the sound once again on the machine, and Clint could listen to Callum's heart beat.

Callum was warm, and Callum was safe.

"I'm right here," he said for hours afterward.  "Daddy's here, baby.  And daddy loves you."

And Clint said the same thing every night, to all three of his children.  Even when Callum turned eight and said he was a big boy now, Clint still said it.

Daddy's here, and daddy loves you.

 


End file.
